


This Work Is Without Title

by oneinspats



Series: Needing No King [2]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ankh-Morpork, Gen, alternate past, kings - Freeform, needing no king
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/pseuds/oneinspats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a sword and swords mean nothing. </p><p>Still playing with the whole “vetinari descends from kings older than Carrot’s bloody line”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Work Is Without Title

It’s a sword.  
  


Vimes remembers seeing it alongside the cold body of a former patrician. There had been cake on the floor next to the sword next to the body. But at the time he hadn’t been worried about it. Hadn’t  _thought_ on it, really. Too concerned with why the man had been strung up by his figgen and what is with the cake? Because what had it been but something posh and nobby and he had been so young and very much  _not._

 

It’s a sword.

A sword with a faded inscription in old Ankh-Morporkian. Something about  _patria_ and  _fides_ and  _familia_ and smelled of duty and honour and death.

Carrot owned a sword that was so unnoticeable it was noticeable.

This one. This sword. The patrician’s sword which wasn’t a Vetinari sword but a Davies sword was perfect in its unnoticeableness because it’s what you would look for in a lord’s sword from a small town in Lancre or Bad Ass or Chalk.

The crest under the description was blank. The previous lords whose sword this had been probably had better things to do than design a pretty family shield.

Vetinari explains, I have my title through my mother’s side of the family, obscure though it is. My father was a powerful merchant-banker but he wasn’t a lord. My mother was a lady. After a fashion.

After a very long fashion.

Jumped up lord that I am.

It’s a sword.

Vimes is holding it and can feel history piling its gaping, aching body around him. ‘You don’t have a crown shaped birthmark by any chance, do you, sir?’ He is suspicious.

On the desk is the sheath and a letter.

‘Can’t say that I do, commander.’

‘Sir.’

It’s a Yes, Sir. Neither acknowledge it, though. Because they are being formal and polite. There is a moment. They are standing on the edge of it, teetering. There is no wind and the city is quiet.

Young Sam had once held a coin found by the river Ankh and had asked, Daddy, why is the Patrician on this old coin? See, it’s from before the official kings. It’s from the unofficial ones. You can tell because of the way it’s been made and this little etching here. The crest above the face. But I think it’s worn off, Daddy, because it’s blank now. 

Vimes reflects that his son is too smart by half.

The moment lingers.

‘The crown is broken, you know.’ Vetinari says. ‘Much like the throne.’

‘Did the kings before Veltrik even wear crowns?’ He sets the sword down on the desk. 

The city is churning. Moving. There are ancient tides and new waters and old blood. Ankh-Morpork is so much more than a city and so is just a city. Just as the man before him is so much more than a patrician and so just a patrician.

What does a sword even signify?

‘No,’ Vetinari breaths it. ‘They never wore a crown.’

Nothing. Except that it’s a sword. 


End file.
